If I Be Lifted Up

IF I BE LIFTED UP 
In Acts chapter three we saw that Peter and John had prayed for the healing of a well-known crippled man who used to beg daily at the gate of the temple and was now leaping about and praising God. A crowd of onlookers continued to grow with all of them standing about amazed at the miracle that had occurred, and Peter was preaching to the growing crowd about the resurrection of Jesus.
Acts 4: 1. While they were still speaking to the people, the priests and the Temple Captain and the Sadducees stormed in. They were offended and worked up that Peter was preaching to the people, and teaching about the resurrection from the dead through Jesus - so they arrested Peter and John and put them in custody until the next day because it was now time for the evening watch in the temple. However, many of the people had already heard the word being preached, and about five thousand people had now become believers (WOW). Then the next morning, the rulers and elders and scribes and Annas the high priest and Caiaphas, and the family group of the high priest came together for a meeting at Jerusalem. They stood Peter and John before them and began to question them. They asked by what power and under whose name or authority had they performed this healing. Peter was full of the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and he said; ‘All you rulers and elders of Israel, if this is some investigation into what caused this wonderful thing to happen to this weak and crippled man I want to inform you all, and indeed all the people of Israel, that this man stands before you totally healed today through the power and the authority of the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified - and whom God raised up from the dead. Salvation comes through no other person, or through any other name under heaven. Through him alone are we saved.’  When they saw the fearless confidence of Peter and John, who were ordinary looking men and obviously uneducated, they were astonished. They recognized them as being among the disciples of Jesus. Then when they looked at the totally healed man standing there next to them, there was nothing left for them to say. However when they dismissed them under guard from the council they began to discuss the matter among themselves and they said to one another ‘What are we to do with these men? It is obvious to everybody in Jerusalem that an undeniable miracle has occurred, but we cannot let this spread any further amongst the people, so we had better warn them severely that they are absolutely forbidden to speak to anybody in that name. So they called Peter and John back in again and forbade them to say anything to anybody or to teach anything in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John said ‘You judge for yourselves whether it is right for us to listen to what God says or to listen to what you say but we can only say what we have truly seen and heard.’ So they threatened them and warned them once again and then they let them go. They realized that they could not punish them for any wrongdoing in front of all those people, because all the people were glorifying God for what had been done.

This was the first example of ‘cancel culture’ in the Bible. The power base of the leaders of Israel had been massively threatened, so the leaders had to put a stop to Peter and John’s preaching to the crowds about the power of Jesus, but they couldn’t deny the power. The Jewish leaders had crucified Jesus but that had not stopped the power and authority from working through his name from Heaven. They wanted to put down the name of Jesus and Peter was determined to lift him up (today people in the world use the name of Jesus almost as much as God’s people – they use it as a swear word and we use it as a word of praise – one way puts him down and the other way lifts him up. Jesus himself had said that if he was lifted up he would draw all men unto himself, and when Peter lifted him up that day the Jewish leaders had seen five thousand people get drawn to Jesus before their very eyes.
Jesus said to a man called Nicodemus, a prominent Jewish leader who came to visit him one night, ‘as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him would have eternal life’ [John 3:15]. Nicodemus had come to acknowledge that Jesus was indeed from God, saying that no one could do those signs if God wasn’t with him. Jesus went on to say to Nicodemus that God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Jesus knew that Nicodemus was a learned teacher of the Jews, and he knew that he would be very familiar with the story of Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness.

That story is in the Book of Numbers chapter twenty one and it describes how the Israelites were journeying through the wilderness after being freed from slavery in Egypt, and they grew impatient and began complaining against God and Moses, expressing their discontent with the food and water in the wilderness. They even said ‘and we hate this boring manna’. So God sent poisonous snakes among them to punish them, and many of them suffered by being bitten and many died. The people came to their senses and approached Moses, confessing their wrongdoing and asking for help and for God to take away the snakes. In response, God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and mount it on a pole and to lift it high (bronze in the Bible speaks of judgment) - then anyone who had been bitten by a snake would simply look at the bronze serpent and be healed.

Nicodemus would have understood the meaning of the poisonous serpents, and their comparison with the serpent that God allowed into the garden and who poisoned the hearts and minds of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. That serpent tempted Adam and Eve to become discontent with God’s provision for them and to want something that their deceived imaginations told them would satisfy them better. The soul of humanity was poisoned that day and from that time forward mankind has lived with the discontent of never having enough and of life never having enough meaning or purpose.

Jesus took the place of that bronze serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness and when he is lifted up in our hearts and minds, he heals our souls from the poison of the darkness that deceives our minds and hearts. And he gets rid of the snakes so that in trusting in him we can be protected from evil.
All the people had to do in the wilderness was to look at the serpent. They didn’t have to do a dance or offer sacrifices – just simply look.

For us this means that we simply perceive and believe in our hearts and minds that Jesus has taken away the judgment of our sins and given us his life to heal our souls because of all the wrong choices that we have made that have caused us so much suffering and anxiety, and robbed our souls of meaning and purpose. Jesus said to Nicodemus that whoever believes in him should not perish (apollymi) but have eternal life - perishing means wasted, ruined, not fit for purpose. Perishing is being stuck in a life that lacks meaning and purpose here on earth – that is being lost and destroyed - and the opposite of perishing and being lost and destroyed is being saved in our souls.

Jesus also said to Nicodemus ‘God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’.

We don’t have to look at a serpent or a statue or anything else. For us to look at Jesus means to fix and focus our hearts and minds upon him as the highest who came to be with the lowest. So our minds humbly ask God to reveal to us who Jesus is, who loves us and died for us and desires to live within us. And our hearts wait in surrender to be drawn closer into loving relationship with him.

As we sit in his presence today we will ask the the things of earth to grow stranhely dim. We can see Jesus in a room through a window and we can go in and sit with him and ask things of earth stay outside. We sit with Jesus and turn our eyes of faith upon him - things of earth might tap on the window and want to come in but you can close the curtain and ask Holy Spirit to help you hear from Jesus in your mind and in your heart.